1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to vehicle spoilers having nozzles and methods of manufacturing the vehicle spoilers and, more particularly, to a vehicle spoiler having a nozzle and a method of manufacturing the vehicle spoiler, in which a support plate for mounting the nozzle is integrated with the vehicle spoiler during a process of injection-molding the vehicle spoiler, thus enhancing the productivity thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
Generally, various kinds of spoilers have been used depending on the kind of vehicle. Such a spoiler prevents the vehicle body from being lifted by air current when the vehicle moves at high speeds, and the spoiler increases traction between wheels and the ground, thus preventing energy loss in the transfer of the engine power, and enhancing steerability and brakeability, thereby ensuring the stability of the vehicle when moving at high speeds.
The spoiler does not require high mechanical stiffness, and the shape thereof is regarded as most important.
Therefore, the spoilers have been manufactured by various forming methods that pursue lightness and reduction of the amount of material used.
Among the above manufacturing methods, a blow-molding method has been most widely used. In the blow-molding method, a parison is preformed by extruding or injection-molding a thermoplastic substance into a tube shape. After the parison is placed in a mold, hot air is blown into the parison to inflate the parison into the shape defined by the mold. Subsequently, the parison is solidified by cooling, thus the product having a hollow structure is completed.
The blow-molding method has been widely used for manufacturing spoilers, because the cost of production is relatively low and stress in the formed product is reduced.
Hereinafter, a conventional spoiler for vehicles will be explained with reference to FIG. 1.
As shown in FIG. 1, the conventional spoiler 1 for vehicles has a blade shape having a streamlined cross-section and is mounted at a rear position to the trunk of a vehicle or, in the case of a sport utility vehicle, is mounted along the edge of the vehicle body above a rear windshield 3.
The spoiler 1 comprises an upper surface and a lower surface and is hollow so as to reduce the weight thereof.
In the case where the spoiler 1 having the above-mentioned construction is mounted to the corner of the vehicle body above the rear windshield 3, because the position at which the spoiler 1 is mounted is similar to that of a nozzle for spraying window washer fluid onto the rear windshield 3, the spoiler 1 and the nozzle may interfere with each other.
To avoid the above problem, the spoiler 1 is manufactured such that the nozzle is integrated with the spoiler 1. However, in this case, there is a problem in that it is difficult to form a support unit for mounting the nozzle because the spoiler 1 is manufactured by blow-molding.
That is, to mount the nozzle to the spoiler 1, a hole corresponding to the outer diameter of the nozzle must be formed in the spoiler 1, but it is very difficult to form a hole having precise dimensions in the spoiler 1 using the blow-molding process. Therefore, a solution to this has been required.